PRODUCTS AND SOLUTIONS

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

OTHER

The State of Rocket Fuel (via AdExchanger)

Rocket Fuel was profiled in an extensive interview with Rocket Fuel founder and CEO George John in AdExchanger today.

Here are some of the highlights:

"What we've done is plugged into the major [RTB] sources for inventory that give us 10 billion impressions a day and that we evaluate through four data centers across the US and Europe - and we're building out in Asia. Every impression gets fully scored by AI (artificial intelligence) models that predict response. 99 percent of what we buy is through exchanges and it's all bought through our A.I. engine. In terms of buying everything off of exchanges, we look more like a DSP. In terms of using A.I., I'm not sure that we look like any of them to the extent we rely on it."

"We have 15 customers right now that have done over $1 million with us. They span automotive, education, travel, telco, financial services, retail, health and consumer packaged goods. Basically, what we find is that the closer you can get as an advertiser to helping us measure your objectives, the closer you can get to sharing with your ad partners what their value is to you - the better the results get for you."

"As Rocket Fuel has evolved, we've become more strategic to our advertisers because we've begun to take on a significant part, if not 100 percent, of their display budget. As we become more strategic to our customers, we're participating more in the conversations that do talk about how they've been trying to figure out media mix optimization. What's been gratifying is they're looking to us to help with that."

"I want to keep customers happy. In phase one of the company, there was this rabid focus on making all the campaigns successful and building a reputation. In Phase Two, we're beginning to scale the company pretty significantly now. We just got 160 employees, and we're going to pass the DSP companies, if we haven't already, in size pretty soon. We intend to double our employees in the next year. We've been growing faster than them recently. We have 11 offices now. As CEO, my own focus is making sure that not only are we the best media partner our customers have worked for, but we're the best place people have worked."